“Nobody can ramble like this. They’ll say: ‘He rambled, he’s cognitively impaired.’ Well, it’s really the opposite. It’s total genius – you know that.” — Donald Trump That’s Trump’s latest bullshit, from his CPAC speech. The crowd went wild in ecstasy when he said it. Trump’s Heinrich Himmler, Stephen Miller obviously wrote it. It was American Carnage on steroids. But it also featured Trump’s personal riffs like the one above. It was a nightmare and everyone should watch it. The Guardian did a good rundown if you don’t have the stomach for it. A few highlights: “For hard-working Americans, November 5th will be our new liberation day,” Trump told a packed ballroom at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor in Maryland.
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Give an inch, take a mile Via Dispatches from the Religious Left, an analysis of the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF ruling explaining how the judges scooped up this ball and rasn it in for a fringe-right touchdown. Chris Geidner writes: I’d like to focus instead on the majority opinion from Justice Jay Mitchell, which is extreme in its own ways — and highlights the dangerous faux-jurisprudence that the U.S. Supreme Court has encouraged. In order to reach its ruling, the court needed to ignore its own past precedents that congruence between the state’s criminal-homicide statute and wrongful-death statute was needed. This is important because the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act was passed in 1872. The court had justified expanding that civil law to fetuses in utero based on an expansion of the criminal law to include fetuses in utero and the claimed need for congruence between the two laws. Now that the court wanted to go further than the criminal law, it just ignored those rulings — overruling them without saying so, as Justice Greg Cook stated in his dissenting opinion.
Vote for candidates who will hear you out Ask me why I do what I do and my answer is not that altruistic. I hate feeling like political road kill. When I’m doing I don’t feel like a victim. This morning (FWIW) I’ll be electing members to the Democratic National Committee for the next four years from North Carolina. I want change agents. Not people intent on adding another bullet item to their long political resumes but not do anything with the position (and there will be plenty of those in the running). Yeah, the system is flawed. But as my friend Anat Shenker-Osorio says, “Forget about the lesser of two evils, and focus on choosing a president open to hearing you out on a whole bunch of evils.” Anat tells The Ink why you should not panic: What do you say to people who are burned out on the idea that we have to fight fascism again this November? How can you keep them focused despite an unending sense of crisis, through another election cycle that looks a whole lot like the last one? Keep your eye on what really matters — making room for progressive change Here’s what I say.
Trump appeared before the Black Conservative Federation (although the crowd seemed mighty white) and this is what he had to say: (He’s really reaching out to Black youth with that one. I guess he figures his fugly sneakers are doing that for him.) Reminder: Trump’s Central Park Five op-ed. When they were exonerated he said they were guilty anyway and the city should never have paid them a dime. Anyone who believes this man is not a racist throwback is deluded.
They can’t Republicans are in a pickle on this one. Look at the record: Most House Republicans have cosponsored a bill declaring that life begins from the moment of conception, a position under increased scrutiny after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are “unborn children.” This Congress, 125 House Republicans — including Speaker Mike Johnson — have cosponsored the “Life at Conception Act,” which states that the term “human being” includes “all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.” The bill does not include any exception for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a reproductive treatment that allows mothers to fertilize several eggs outside the womb in order to increase the chances of a viable pregnancy. Several healthcare providers in Alabama have already halted IVF programs in the wake of the ruling, given that IVF treatments may include the discarding of fertilized eggs, which may now violate the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
In the past they tried to exclude them but they’ve thrown up their hands now and are welcoming them into the MAGA fold. Where they certainly belong: Nazis appeared to find a friendly reception at the conservative political action conference this year. Throughout the conference, racist extremists, some of whom had secured official CPAC badges, openly mingled with conference attendees and espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories. The presence of the individuals has been a persistent issue at CPAC, and in previous years, conference organizers have ejected well known nazis and white supremacists, such as Nick Fuentes. But this year, racist conspiracy theorists didn’t meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017. At the Young Republican mixer Saturday evening a group of Nazis, who openly identified as national socialists, mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed race science and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
A psychologist formerly of Johns Hopkins University has some thoughts on Donald Trump’s mental status. Chauncy DeVega at Salon interviewed him about a number of things but this caught my eye due to that very weird moment above: Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing. What evidence do you have for that conclusion? “Phonemic paraphasias” —the substitution of non-words for words that sound similar—are not normally seen until a patient enters the moderate to severe stages of Alzheimer’s. “What I don’t understand is why those clips aren’t replayed over and over in the mainstream media. Isn’t Trump babbling incoherently the most newsworthy part of his rally?
Here’s a NYT gift link to a thorough deconstruction of the “confidential informant” (dare I say) hoax with which the GOP planned to impeach Biden. Read it all if you have the time. An excerpt: In May 2023, Senator Charles E. Grassley, a chief antagonist of President Biden, strode to the Senate floor with some shocking news: He had learned, he said, of a document in the F.B.I.’s possession that could reveal “a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden.” Mr. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, suggested to any Americans listening that there was a single document that could confirm the most sensational corruption allegations against Mr. Biden — and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was engaging in a coverup. “Did they sweep it under the rug to protect the candidate Biden?” he asked conspiratorially. Over the next few months, Mr. Grassley’s quest to make public the allegation — laid out in an obscure document known as an F.B.I. Form 1023 — became a fixation, and a foundation of the growing Republican push to impeach Mr. Biden as payback for Democrats’ treatment of former President Donald J. Trump.
Theists couldn’t care less about unintended consequences The law of unintended consequences doesn’t have a shorter, pithier name like Murphy’s. Seems to me the two are closely related. They are sure to come into play soon in Alabama. Media Matters: During a recent interview on the program of self-proclaimed “prophet” and QAnon conspiracy theorist Johnny Enlow, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker indicated that he is a proponent of the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a theological approach that calls on Christians to impose fundamentalist values on all aspects of American life. Enlow is a pro-Trump “prophet” and leading proponent of the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a “quasi-biblical blueprint for theocracy” that asserts that Christians must impose fundamentalist values on American society by conquering the “seven mountains” of cultural influence in U.S. life: government, education, media, religion, family, business, and entertainment. Enlow has also repeatedly pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory, sometimes even connecting it to the Seven Mountain Mandate.
Marge wants to be in charge of his Final Solution The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports: Madame Secretary? Forget the jockeying to be Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told us at a stop in Greenville, South Carolina, ahead of Saturday’s GOP primary there that she has her eye on a key Cabinet position if the former president wins in November. “I’d be honored to serve President Trump in his next administration in any capacity that he asks me. But I’m certainly particularly interested in Homeland Security. I think it’s the top issue in the country,” she said. He might have to set up a cage match with Stephen Miller, but I’d guess Miller will end up in the White House again. Somebody has to keep the addled bronzer poisoned Dear Leader on the right path. Sounds great. I wonder if she could get confirmed by the Senate? Oh wait, that probably won’t be necessary. The Republican Senate majority will change any rules they need to in order to give Trump what he wants. I expect there will be no more pesky impediments.